The National Gallery of Contemporary Art attracted numerous people to the reopening of the Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin over the weekend. According to information from Sunday, around 32,000 visitors came to the opening days. After the conversion and redesign of parts of the historic building, the museum now has a newly designed permanent exhibition “National Gallery. A Collection for the 21st Century” to discover.
“We are overwhelmed by the enthusiastic response,” said Till Fellrath, co-director of the Hamburger Bahnhof with Sam Bardaouil, the dpa. “We are particularly pleased that many people have come to the Hamburger Bahnhof for the first time.” Fellrath described the open house days as a “terrific success”. He announced a second edition for June 2024.
The National Gallery of the Present wants to open up further. The festival weekend was also intended as a thank you to the public after the Hamburger Bahnhof, which opened in 1848 as the starting point of the railway line from Berlin to Hamburg, and the adjacent Rieckhallen were bought by the federal government and Berlin last year after years of negotiations and thus secured as a museum location were.
The Hamburger Bahnhof has large collections of contemporary art. As the national gallery of the present, it is part of the Berlin National Gallery, which also includes the Old National Gallery with art from the 19th and early 20th centuries and the New National Gallery for the 20th century. There are also the Berggruen Museum, Friedrichswerder Church and the Scharf-Gerstenberg Collection.
